Kevin
Historical Chinese literature, poetry, and philosophy. Co-host Rereading the Stone podcast https://bsky.app/profile/rereadingstone.bsky.social
book reviews & discussion of Ming-Qing literature, science fiction, etc. patreon.com/kmichaelwilson
- caizi jiaren 才子佳人 is hard to translate, as it's not meant to signify just that the men are talented & the women are beautiful, but that the men and women are both talented and both beautiful, hence there's a mutually reflecting aspect that aligns with, e.g., how Jayne Ann Krentz understands romance
- it is pretty funny that the central message of The Great Gatsby is basically, "Well, even if you do become rich, the other rich won't accept you, therefore the American Dream is a mere illusion," which is not an especially deep or profound take
- hey, so I've been working on this novel for THIRTY YEARS, it's technically not finished and now my life is over
- If only Chinese media could up its subtitle game, you could go straight from watching Heated Rivalry to watching Qianfu 潛伏 (2008), then from there get into the 1980s version of Dream of the Red Chamber, and then... world peace 🪷 bsky.app/profile/kmic...
- funny to think that when we were all reading "the emperor has no clothes" as children, that was actually a kind of extremely heavy-handed foreshadowing
- hot take, with Gaiman and a lot of these guys there were clear signs in the writing, and if you missed them, you should take the "L" and simply acknowledge that others were reading and interpreting texts at a higher level
- I tend to think that, above a certain point, all competition becomes both toxic and counterproductive. In general, the formulation "world's greatest X" is problematic, as it presupposes a theory of value that is objectively false
- The better take, especially given that Epstein has been seen creating /pol/, is that QAnon has elements of a meta-conspiracy-theory designed to make discussion of real actually-happening conspiracies impossible
- the big battle at the end of Flowers in the Mirror 鏡花緣 (19th C.) is giving big battle at the end of A Supplement to the Journey to the West 西遊補 (17th. C.) vibes
- ah damn I missed February Fools' Day
- RAT Korga never gets his HEA smh
- tend to think nothing short of what I'm proposing here would allow for knowledge production that is democratic and non-abusive any laboring to maintain the illusion that higher education is a "meritocracy" in its present form enables the worst of what we are seeing
- Oh, your favorite author Ken Liu has a new book out. How do you say his name, again?
- made the pronunciation ditty into a post do you know how to pronounce "Xi Jinping"? What about "Mr. Liu"? www.patreon.com/posts/pronun...
- Trying to imagine a version of this, "Clearly the Real Baoyu is here, so where did I [Jia Baoyu] run off to?"
- one of the best jokes from Flowers in the Mirror 鏡花緣(19th C.), and a brief discussion of "wish fulfillment" www.patreon.com/posts/one-of...
- Reposted by Kevin[Not loaded yet]
- "Liu" does not rhyme with "dew," The phoneme you're thinking of is "Lu" "Xi" is not pronounced "gee," mister! It sounds just like "She," as in "She's my sister!"
- Way too much academic scholarship is an extrapolation from the feeling of producing that scholarship. People choose scholarship that makes them feel serious when they're doing it. Ironically, this almost guarantees that your actual scholarly product is outright wrong, in addition to being unserious.
- stop burning your homemade bread who told you that's more authentic they're wrong
- credit where credit is due, the Wikipedia entry on "romance novel" manages a short (somewhat perfunctory) section on the Ming-Qing "scholar-beauty" 才子佳人 novel this large and mostly unsung body of works is one of the only historical romance traditions in which men predominated
- Did Ice Planet Barbarians (2015) popularize the "mediated kidnapping" trope? In most of these scif-fi romance books, there is a kidnapping alien species, but then there is *another* alien species that "saves" the heroines from the kidnappers
- "Clearly the monk is here—so where have I gone?"
- "Clearly the monk is here—so where have I gone?"
- penal* does this count as a Freudian slip? it's also there, baked into the language, so I'm calling it "a wash"
- okay but Ibis (1985) was published in 1985
- do we think heated rivalry can teach sports people what emotions are
- Even King Zhou's "material curiosity" resonates with so much of contemporary elite predatory culture the "crude materialism" of the vulgar rich, their belief that nothing that isn't immediately perceivable is real
- times bad enough Bi Gan 比干 anecdotes starting to hit described in Flowers in the Mirror (19th C.) as "dying with a smile" 含笑就死 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_Gan
- Reposted by Kevin[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Kevin[Not loaded yet]
- times bad enough Bi Gan 比干 anecdotes starting to hit described in Flowers in the Mirror (19th C.) as "dying with a smile" 含笑就死 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_Gan
- Reposted by Kevin[Not loaded yet]
- considering drafting an essay arguing that the primary reason caizi jiaren 才子佳人 novels aren't immediately recognized as romance novels is that they were mainly written by men
